Bush intentionally botched the name of the infamous prison for the same reason that he intentionally mispronounces "nuclear". He wants his constituency to believe that the name, and all it conveys, is just another pesky problem that will go away. It's not important enough to pronounce correctly.

What a cynical bastard we have representing us to the world. What a horrible shame, one that will take us generations to recover from.

In addition to his low IQ and 3rd grade reading level, he doesn't give a shit. He doesn't care about pronouncing words that have meaning to people of other cultures. The only language that he likes is spoken by people that look like he does. He could care less about this country or the world. He is about self - GWB.

Bush trips over Abu Ghraib pronunciationCARLISLE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Two rehearsals for his prime-time speech were not enough to keep U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) from mangling the name of the Abu Ghraib prison that brought shame to the U.S. mission in Iraq (news - web sites).

During the half-hour televised address, Bush mispronounced Abu Ghraib each of the three times he mentioned it while announcing U.S. plans to tear down the infamous jail and replace it with a new facility.

snip

But the Republican president, long known for verbal and grammatical lapses, stumbled on the first try, calling it "abugah-rayp". The second version came out "abu-garon", the third attempt sounded like "abu-garah".

White House aides, who described the speech as an important address on the future of Iraq, said Bush practised twice on Monday before boarding his helicopter for his trip to the speaking venue at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

I had the same observation -- I reread the article a couple times looking for where they tell us how it's supposed to sound, and they don't. (To the English-listening ear, it may be best rendered "aboo grehb".)

But I think it's additionally significant that not only are Bush's pronunciations incorrect, they're not even the most obvious mistakes ("aboo grabe" or "aboo grayib") This suggests not even the usual American "Doesn't everyone speak English?" habits, but that he's so thoroughly disinterested in what he's speaking about he can't even be bothered to read the teleprompter phonetically.

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